He Trained 1,000 UGC Creators—Here’s What the Best Do Differently | Owen Nurminen E1

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the UGC Industry Podcast, the show that brings creators, brands, and everyone building the UGC space into one conversation. I'm your host, Brandon Heen, and every week I sit down with the people shaping this industry, from the creators landing brand deals to the founders and agencies behind them. Let's get into it. So on this episode, we have Owen Nurmanen, one of the first UGC creators, the owner of one of the first UGC mentorships, and the founder of RTech, a platform that helps UGC creators make more money. Owen, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, man. So, Owen, you've been in the UGC space longer than most, and it's a rapidly evolving space. What is the biggest change you've seen since you started?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Well, thanks for calling me Unk to start the show. When I started, I was a creator for Whoop. That was the first deal that I did, the fitness wearable. And those were classic traditional UGC, a lot of money for just a few videos a month. It allowed me to leave my job and do that full time. About 2024, a lot of apps started using organic UGC, making new accounts and doing mass volume and stuff. So it's it's completely switched. Now it's mainstream. At the time no one knew what it was. Now everyone knows what it is, and it's like the most valuable thing for companies to grow right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

How does this new kind of UGC differ from the old kind of UGC?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

The original kind of UGC was traditional paid ads, a visual hook if you're selling a CPG or physical product showing like before and after, feature benefit, some sort of CTA with urgency and scarcity. For organic UGC, you're going to be doing very organic, natural storytelling. Anything that looks like a normal video or anything that would normally go viral, it can now be disguised as an ad. Obviously, the brands that do it well are continuing to crush.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

So I got into UGC only six months ago. I started with what's known as tech UGC andor organic UGC, where you're creating a brand new Instagram and TikTok account and posting as an ambassador for that company. So you're making super simple videos every day as opposed to making really complex and aesthetic one-off videos that people traditionally think about when they think of UGC. What I love so much about it is that the barrier to entry to get in is so low. It's very simple content that you create. And instead of just getting paid for a one-off deal, you can get on monthly retainers. So I actually got into UGC by joining Owen's mentorship content economy. And that they directed me towards this kind of UGC because it's so simple to start making money and very quickly got onto thousands of dollars a month's worth of retainers. And it really changed my life really quick.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yeah, we always recommend new creators starting in organic UGC and working their way up to bigger, better deals with more aligned brands. So typically how that looks is tech apps software, B2C software, they're going to come in and hire creators by the hundreds. And those creators are going to make those new accounts and post daily. Companies like this because instead of paying for that original ad at thousands of dollars per video, they could pay a thousand dollars for 30 or 60 videos, which might be cross-posted. They have a lot more chance of going viral. Basically, they're they're paying for views at a much lower CPM.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

And by CPM, he essentially means the cost of a view. So when companies are running either ads or social media campaigns, they want to look at how much it costs to get eyeballs on their products. Can you talk a little bit about how you saw this organic UGC come into the marketplace?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I remember it very vividly. I had just gotten some UGC deals. I was doing it full time, and I'm a huge proponent of personal brand. I think you are too. And I made a personal tweet saying that I was doing UGC or something like that. And I had a friend reach out to me and he said, Yo, I remember you from Fortnite. I saw that you're doing UGC now. Do you have any creators that I could use for my app? And his app was doing like 400, 500k a month. And I was like, sure, what kind of paid ads do you guys want? He's like, No, no, no, this is a new type of UGC. It's organic UGC. We just want them to make new accounts and post to it daily. And we'll pay them like $25 per video plus bonuses. So they can post as much as they want and they can do thousands of dollars a month. And so I started having a couple other apps reach out to me like this, and I had to basically get hundreds of creators really quickly. So that's why I made content economy to train new creators to introduce them to the space and get them opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

How did you find so many creators, especially with it not being a mainstream thing?

SPEAKER_00 4:14

At the time, TikTok shop, I think it was 2023 that it started. And so people were really into TikTok shop and it was starting to grow. And I was like, I think UGC has the opportunity to be like TikTok shop, if not better or bigger, because it's organic like Shop, but it's also paid ads like traditional UGC. I basically went out and started making content on it, and I just bet early that it was going to be a huge thing. It just made total sense to me. I was watching these companies hire literally hundreds of creators. One of the biggest apps that I know that we worked with has had over 500 creators posting every single day on UGC accounts. Wow. And if you extrapolate that out to, you know, thousands and thousands of apps, it's so many creators. It's actually crazy. Plus, creators churn. You know, they'll do a deal for a couple months or three months and then they'll move on. So there's so much opportunity that I just doubled down on it.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

So as someone who's trained over a thousand creators, what's the difference between a creator who comes in, thrives, and makes a bunch of money versus one who churns in a couple months?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

It's purely mentality. A lot of creators will come in. Like, for instance, we have a very proven system that's like two or three steps guaranteed to get deals because people trust us. So if you come in and you can follow directions, do exactly what we say, we will get you deals.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah, guys. And I want to add some perspective here because I've been trying to make money online since around 2019. I've done several different different side hustles from copywriting, basically writing ads before ChatGPT even existed. I wholesaled real estate. I had a YouTube channel. And by the way, I was successful with all of those things, just never to a massive extent. Uh UGC is the first thing where it just blew up immediately for me. And I feel like a big reason of that is the timing of where we are in the market. With any opportunity, the first movers are the ones who are going to get outsized returns. The first people to do drop shipping made a ton of money, doesn't work so well anymore. The first people to get into crypto made a ton of money, doesn't work so well anymore. Every opportunity has a life cycle. And what's so cool about UGC is that it's so early on, you can come in with no experience and start making thousands of dollars very quickly. Literally a week after joining a content economy, I already had over $3,000 a month in retainers.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

That's usually what we expect. Like we expect people to come in and take retainer deals right away. There's going to be a scaling issue with a creator if you have to make like 100 plus videos. That's kind of why we built RTech too. So you can have AI edit all your videos for you. You sit down, batch record once a week, get all your videos done, and then you could just post them.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

So when you talk about scaling, obviously for a lot of people, getting up to making five to $10,000 a month by yourself with no boss, that in and of itself is life-changing. But then there's other folks, right? I had a career in tech sales where I was making $20, $25K a month. How does someone get from making five to $10K a month with UGC up to $15 to $20K plus a month?

SPEAKER_00 7:04

You have to usually do performance-based deals and get really good. I'll give you an example. There's a company called Hicksfield. Hicksfield is paying like $50 per video plus a $5 CPM.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

It's a $3 CPM. So that means for every thousand views, you get $3. So most UGC creators would balk at the idea of making a video for $50 because they're like, well, I just got paid $250 to make a video for this electrolyte company. Why is this deal so attractive when it's quote unquote only $50 for a video?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

If you could post five times a day, then that's $250 a day. It's pretty good. Plus bonuses on V. So if any of those videos get a million views, it's $3,000 extra. So creators are doing insane numbers. And these companies are VC backed. And what they're trying to do is basically go attract the top talent in terms of content and growth so they can go make a return on their investment for their investors.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

The real key here is that those videos are much, much simpler than what you think. You're you don't have to write out your own scripts. You don't have to do b-roll, you don't have to have camera angles. You quite literally have your phone out like this, and you're recording a few lines into your phone and then showing a demonstration of the product. So these videos, once you get into the rhythm, take 10 to 15 minutes, even less if you have something that can edit it like RTech. So so basically what people are doing is they're creating a whole week's worth of videos in one hour. So then the dollar per hour is actually more than what you're making in traditional UGC, plus you have the opportunity to earn view bonuses, which if you're posting hundreds of times a month, you're bound to eventually hit. Like I've seen people on that Higgs field deal make $10,000 from one video.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

We'll check the chat and people be like, wow, I just made a lot of money. It's cool to see, but that's how it's changed a lot. Organic is just great when you're starting because it's so cost effective for companies.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

So you said you started recruiting a lot of your first creators from TikTok shop. Why did creators want to move from TikTok shop over into UGC?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

TikTok shop early on, it was actually pretty good, but I mean it's affiliate, right? Like you're you're actually only making money based on commission. And so UGC is an opportunity to kind of do both, where you do get paid per video and you get money for commission based on how well your videos actually do. So to me personally, it was a much easier sell than telling someone to do TikTok shop because you could post 100 videos and not have anything happen for you. If you post a hundred videos with a UGC deal, it's a flat rate, you are getting paid out. So that was kind of the big thing that was important for me was being able to tell them that distinction.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

It's guaranteed money. So what I've seen is that with UGC, it is much easier to get to five to 10K a month, but with TikTok shop, you see people occasionally doing like 100K months, where that's not really as likely to happen with UGC. What are some tactical tips you would give somebody who's just getting into UGC to actually get a lot of views on their videos?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

This is actually probably easier than you would think. The first things first, you have to drop your ego and you have to go listen to people that are like really doing well. There's things that you do not know when you start that people who are doing well do know. So I would try to get around those people, could be in the form of a community. You could you could pay for like one-off coaching calls. It's actually something we implemented in RTAC as we have an academy. So you can go in there and talk to top coaches. You could pay them for 30 minutes or an hour of their time, or you could just go to live group calls and have coaches review your content in app.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

I've spent a lot of time learning from Owen and the coaches in the group. I also have a long history of internet marketing before UGC. I would say there's really two main things that are gonna help you get videos that actually have views so you can get bonuses. And one of them, the way you speak on camera, like the delivery. Because if if you're new right now, I want you to go film a video of yourself talking about a product and listen to it back. You're probably gonna cringe a little bit and you're gonna be like, oh, why do I have this voice? Like, I don't sound natural. So the best UGC creators are the folks who are able to sound like they're talking to a friend when they're on the phone. So I always recommend people who are starting is imagine you're on FaceTime with your friend and telling them about a product you like. You don't want to be too monotone, you don't want to be over the top. You can you genuinely want to sound natural because humans are smart, they have instinct. As soon as they can sense that you're selling something, they're gonna swipe off you. So that's one thing. And then the other aspect that comes down to it is um, you know, how quick you can capture someone's attention with a hook. So a hook is gonna be the first few seconds of a video. And this comes in a couple forms. One is gonna be what you actually say, is what you're saying catching people's attention. You can do this by like calling out a specific audience, like, hey, if you're a guy between the age of 20 and 30 and you want to lose weight, blah, blah, blah. And then the other aspect of it is gonna be a text hook, which is like the few pieces of text that are that are on the screen that will stop the scroll. So these are all things that um is important to learn over time. If you can understand the basics of marketing and how to generate companies revenue, you're never gonna go hungry, whether it's UGC or or anything else.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah, and organic social is an always changing game. But the thing that is held true for me, I've done 500 million views plus on my personal brand on TikTok. I've had many, many videos over 5 million views, 10 million views. The videos that always do best are the ones where I appear that I'm not trying at all. I'm in my bed, I look like I'm tired, like I do right now, because I got three hours of sleep last night. If I were to pull up my phone and talk about something that's extremely viral, it's almost like a valley girl accent, is how I would describe it. You kind of want to like annoy people, like that little like weird thing where you're like, guys who don't get their girls out of their job or kind of, you know what I mean? It's just like annoying. You have to use tonality and spice it up. And for every person, this could be different, but that's like the main thing is that hook. When someone's watching, are they in gator mode where they're just consuming and like eating your content and they're not even thinking like what it's about? Or if you're like, guys, go go buy this product right now, like this is a great product, then they're just gonna be like, I don't care, swipe.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Exactly. Okay, so I have another question that I've always wanted to know because being in the UGC space for a while and meeting a bunch of UGC creators, I will say a lot a lot of people who are getting into UGC are brand new. They haven't had professional jobs before. Um, they're people who are who are quite quite frankly hard to train. And you've built one of the best UGC agencies and mentorships. So, how were you able to take people with with very little experience and get them onto deals and actually perform for them?

SPEAKER_00 13:31

I think what's special with content economy is we have eight coaches. In my thought process, it's having the best coaches, having the best tools, having the best opportunities. We really want creators to have the best creator experience. And so if we deliver on that, then everything else takes care of itself.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

And where do you see the UGC industry space going in the three to five years?

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Look at what the best companies and the smartest people in the world are doing. So, what is Zuckerberg doing at Meta? They do double down on paid ads. They are introducing shop to Instagram. I think we should align our expectations with what the smartest people in the world think is gonna happen. Creators become more and more important to that equation as well. Even if you are making AIUGC, you need a smart person or a talented marketer or copywriter to come up with that type of content, someone that understands content. So there's there's a little bit of talent arbitrage.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

This goes back to a point I made before where fundamentally the most important thing you can do for yourself is learn the skill of marketing. Because a lot of people ask, well, what if AI takes over UGC? I'll say, one, at the moment, it's absolutely nowhere close to looking realistic or being able to resemble a human, but I don't want to be ignorant and say that's never possible. You're still gonna need a person to come up with the concepts, come up with the formats, uh the branding, the scripts, everything. If you can learn the skills of how to persuade and sell people over video, you know, you're never gonna worry about making money. What would you say is a big misconception that people have about the UGC space?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Man, I don't know. What would you say is a big misconception?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah, I think one of the major misconceptions is people see these organic UGC deals that are paying $10, $20, $30 a post, and they can't drop their ego and they say, Oh, I would never make a video for $10, $20, $30. I want to get paid two to $300 for a video. But see, the thing is the folks who are out there fighting for the two to $300 traditional UGC deals, it's just a one-off deal and then it's over. What's awesome about organic UGC and why it's such a great thing for beginners to get into is that you can get monthly retainers. Basically, you can get up to the point of making $5K a month within within a month or so. And then from there, you can really decide where you want to take your life. Do you want to quit your job? Do you want to stay in your job and just have some more income? I worked in tech sales at Cisco making $300K a year. And when I've started in UGC, I was taking deals that were paying me only $10 a post. So that's 30 posts for $300 a month. And basically uh ascended extremely quickly.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

With bonuses. So it wasn't just $300 a month.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

But here's the other thing. I didn't even go viral for probably my first three to five hundred posts. So I'll have new students come into a content economy and they'll be like, I'm not going viral. I'm making the same videos as everyone else. And I'll be like, How many videos have you made? 11. I mean, even as someone me, like who's been experienced with marketing and and content, you got to put in in the reps to really learn the skill of this type of UGC. But once once you do and you start getting crazy bonuses, man, the money is like unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

I've seen creators just do crazy numbers. I think the most I've seen a creator make was like 40-50K a month. A lot of people only need five to 10K to change their Yeah, and I even think if you want 10 to 20K, it's pretty doable. Um, but what I've seen happen is creators who are really good at UGC, they'll go become a creator manager for different apps or brands or a coach, or they'll launch their own product or app. Like we have guys that have gone through content economy that have launched an app, and that app's done over a million a month. And they started as creators. There's just once you understand how to market, and it's really just three things it's organic UGC, paid ads, and influencer marketing. So if you know one of those three, you're good.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

That that's a great point that I want to bring up because a question I get from a lot of people is what do I do after UGC? What's next? And what's so cool about it is that it really is just a stepping stone into entrepreneurship. So a lot of my students, this is the first time they've ever made money online. And you don't have to want to do UGC forever. You don't have to know your 10-year plan to take step one. So just by getting into UGC, the amount of opportunities that open up to you are insane. Even after performing well for three to four months, you can become a creator manager, which is essentially where brands will hire you to bring in other creators, and then you can get a cut from everybody. So that's another way to grow your income, also without having to always be on the grind of making your videos yourself. At this point, I I could launch an app, I could launch a consumer product company, a hair product company. Being able to see all the insights of what these companies are are doing to run their ads is so valuable. And I feel like the world really has opened up. And it all starts with taking that first step.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

The thing with being a creator manager, the coveted skill is that creators look up to you and you can coach them on what they need to do to go viral. So if you're in a brand as a creator and you do go viral and you're one of the top performers, it is likely that a brand's gonna offer you an extra three to five K a month just to manage those creators and do coaching calls with them. So it's not purely just bringing in people either. It is elevating these other creators and teaching them what's worked for you so that the rest of the program, the rest of that uh growth team can improve. So one of the best campaigns I've seen you do when I knew you were like gonna make it, it was the base campaign. Every video you made, I was like, that could go viral. Why do you think you were so good at that campaign?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yeah, this is really interesting. So this is a campaign for based hair products. So I was working on it with an agency and they had proven viral formats for us to copy. I was doing formats that all the other creators were doing, but the other creators, they were a lot younger than me. They were they were in their early 20s. It was more kind of like Gen Z gimmicky type videos. And one day they were like, yo, just rip a regular talking head video. No gimmicks, no overlays, no b-roll. And I just filmed a video talking like I'd normally talk about how to style your hair, and it went crazy. It got it got over a million views. Yeah, and and the main reason is because I wasn't acting or I wasn't trying to not be myself. I genuinely was just talking to the camera, sounding natural and giving advice. It felt super organic. You never would have known it was an ad.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

And you have great hair.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

That is true too. You use your unfair advantage. Like what I always say, I I tell a lot of guys this, man, people always think you have to be a pretty girl to do well in UGC. Guys have such a massive advantage in UGC right now. Think about it. How many guys do you know are promoting skincare products and hair care products?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Just me.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Basically, basically none. So if you're a dude, especially if you're above average looking and in shape, there is a wide open opportunity to make so much money. Because think about it, other guys who are charismatic, good looking, in shape, they already have good jobs. Like, like they're they're there's no competition. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

So that's so funny, bro. I've never thought of it like that. It's hilarious. What do girls think about you doing UGC? Like, how is it for dating?

SPEAKER_01 20:34

They think it's super cool. They they all they all say, How do I do that? I want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

So funny. I've had the same experience, and then like you get them deals and they're like, you make enough money, like you can just like take care of us. That's true. I think it's just fun. And I think it's healthy to create, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah. And it's so fun that whether it be a girl you're interested in dating or just a friend or a family member, being able to change someone's life in the snap of a finger by showing them how to make 10K a month is really such a blessing. And I enjoy it so much because throughout my life, I've had a ton of great mentors. And really for the past 10 years, I've almost always been the mentee asking other people for help. So being able to give back and help people change their lives by making their first 10, 5k a month is uh is like really, really gratifying. And I feel like it's like giving me a new purpose in life.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Dude, I love that. I I feel the exact same. I feel super fortunate that content economy has grown to a thousand people. That's crazy. And I think that doesn't happen unless there's strong word of mouth. But the benefit of content economy now is the distribution in itself. You join and you get to be around all these people, like like you, you know, like people that are really, really good at what they do. I feel extremely grateful and lucky to be in this position. And sometimes, you know, I forget that because I'm stressed on the app and we're up till 4 a.m. every night.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

I've never had more fun in my life. I'm so grateful for one, not only taking the bet on myself to dive into UGC and go all in when I discovered the right opportunity, but also to meet guys like Owen and to find the content economy group. And really just for everybody in the space, all the app founders who are providing us with these opportunities, all these campaign managers who are spending time to coach and train people on how to change their life, all the other UGC creators I meet. It's so fun to meet other folks who are on the same path, entrepreneurial visions, creative people. And that's why I started this podcast to meet all the unique personalities in this space in a world of 60-second Instagram clips. It's so nice to be able to have longer conversations with the amazing people shaping this industry and changing people's lives. So, Owen, thank you so much for coming on. Again, super grateful for everything you built and really excited to keep growing things together.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Thank you for having me, man. It's been a pleasure. Looking forward to see what you do and you continue to grow this and be like the guy in our space now. So keep doing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Awesome. And guys, if you're listening to this and you're curious about what it's like to get into UGC, or even if you're already doing UGC, but you're struggling to get to that 10 to 15K a month, we have a lot of brands coming to us asking for strong creators. We need folks who are willing to come put in the work.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

We need thousands. Thousands. We need thousands, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Thousands. We need people who are who are willing to come in, put in the work, apply what we teach. And when you do that, you are never gonna have to worry about money again. You are gonna have a skill set that is gonna set you up, you and your future family up for life. Feel free to connect with me and Owen on Instagram. If you want to learn more about content economy, the group that taught me UGC took me from $0 to 18K in just four months. Thousands of success stories of people getting to five to 10K a month. The link will be down below. But regardless, would love to connect with you on Instagram, even if it's uh a few DMs back and forth.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Yeah, and also make sure you guys use RTech. The new UGC version of it is going to be live in about a week and a half. We do have coaches in RTech that you can go to in an app, just download the app, you can talk to these coaches, see what it's about, learn. Um, we have influencers in there, top influencers with literally millions of followers that are willing to get on calls with you, as well as tools to give you better opportunities. And we're also partnered with the top platforms in our space. So we essentially aggregate all the best deals from the main platforms and surface the most relevant ones to you. So we really try to build it with this creator experience in mind so that you know our creators and content economy honestly just make a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

That's what we're here for. Make money and have fun.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Awesome. Talk to you guys soon.